Earlier this school year we told you about our Internal Technology Residency Program through a series of blog posts. Since then, we’ve wanted to find another way to share with you more about the program and give you the opportunity to interact with some of the awesome people involved! What better way for us to do this than through Google+ Hangouts On Air? On Tuesday, March 6th at 6:30 pm PST join us for a live session telling you more about the program and what sets it apart from other IT opportunities. I’ll be joined by some other fellow ITRs along with an ITR recruiter; you don’t want to miss out!

Starting today, we encourage you to begin submitting your questions via Twitter or Google+ using the hashtag #ITRPquestion. Between now and Monday, March 5th, we’ll collect a list of the questions that are sent in and answer them live during the Hangout On Air!

Introduction: Today’s post is the third in our series on Exploring Design @ Google, which highlights the work of the user experience (UX) team at Google. The user experience team is a multi-disciplinary team of designers and researchers who collaborate with engineering and product management to create innovative, usable great-looking products that people love to use. The mantra of the the team is: "Focus on the user and all else will follow." Each week, we have featured a different Googler on the team and talked to them about their role, their background and what they love about working for Google. For today’s post, we sat down for a few questions with Marc Hemeon, a user interface designer at YouTube. -- Ed.

What does user experience mean to you?

Marc Hemeon: I think of user experience as the emotional response someone has when using your product. A successful user experience tends to reward the user with moments of delight, pleasant surprise and satisfaction. A dreadful user experience makes the user feel abandoned, lonely, unsatisfied and just plain dumb. Great products make the user feel in control. User experience designers are manipulators of emotion. Use your powers for good.

What is your role at YouTube?

MH: Some have compared me to a muscle car, others a provocateur, but my official title is more like “senior user interface designer of awesomeness.” I pretty much have the greatest job known to man (at least for a designer). I get to take the ideas, problems and thoughts of super smart folks and wrap them in a beautiful design. If my design mojo is flowing then I hopefully not only solve the problem at hand, but end up creating something unique and rad and fully satisfying for my team.

How does your role fit into the larger team?

MH: There’s lots of different types of designers and styles of working. At YouTube, I have found myself most effective at the beginning of a new project, which basically means I get to throw a million crazy ideas against the wall to see what sticks. Projects range from redesigning the look and feel of all of youtube.com, to new video player designs to seed brainstorming for totally new product ideas. I tend to lean towards working on projects that push the visual design we have at YouTube and imagine what it may look like in the future. We have an incredible user research group at YouTube who provide eye opening data and insights into user behavior, expectations and disappointments. Their findings can provide inspiration for a lot of the design work we do and shed light on where our current design solutions fall short.

Tell us about a day in the life of a designer.

MH: Before a designer can design for the world, they have to first design for themselves.

Here is a typical day:

Wake at 5:50am
I workout for about 1.5 hours, then cruise home, hang at breakfast with my amazing wife and 3 kiddies, then hop on the freeway for 45 minute commute. During my commute I look for patterns in nature to inspire my day, while listening to NPR.

8:30-8:45 Breakfast 2
I get to work around 8:30am or so and enjoy a delicious breakfast of cage free egg whites, salsa, avocado and cottage cheese coupled with a frothy beverage of Diet Coke.

8:45 - 9:00am Email
I cruise up to my ergonomic standing desk which can also adjust to a sitting desk for hardcore pixel pushing. I open email for about 5 minutes, and skim around looking for any super urgent stuff I need to attend to. I only check email 3 times a day and never at night or the weekends - this is something new I am trying in 2012 to achieve more balance.

9:00am - 11:45am Make Time
After email I open Photoshop or Illustrator or bust out a sketch pad. Somewhere in there I slap on some headphones and crank up some music and let the creative juices flow. During my “make time” I am usually creating high fidelity mocks along with pretty detailed flows that allow someone to click through and understand the UI and interaction I have in mind.

11:50 - Noon - Stand Up for Major Project
If it’s a Monday, I have a brief stand up meeting for one of my major projects. We literally stand up and talk about what we are working on that day and do a quick sync.

Noon - 12:30 Lunch
I then cruise down to lunch. I typically spend about 25 mins. at lunch, usually with other YouTubers or random YouTube celebrities like the Nyan Cat.

12:30 - 1:00 Snippets, Internet Surfing and Email
After lunch I cruise back up and do a little internet surfing, email etc. If it’s a Monday I write a quick hit list of all the stuff I did - my snippets - of the week prior along with links to all my mocks. I share these snippets with my close team members and other designers to keep them in the loop with the work I am doing.

1:00 - 1:15 Doodle Time
I will typically draw something once a day, whether its typography or an illustration.

1:15 - 6:00ish Make Time or Meeting Time
The afternoons are either devoted to meetings or more make time, or a mix of both. Throughout the day I will reach out to a product manager, engineer or other designer and have ad hoc five minute design busts to show what I am working on and to solicit some quick feedback, share ideas, etc. I may get up and go work at a couch or down in the cafe or in one of the massage chairs to mix things up a bit.

Do you ever get “designer’s block”? If so, how you get back in the groove of things?

MH: If I am having a creative block and I don’t really have a strong idea, I will typically sketch till my fingers fall off creating various wireframes, flows and ideas. Once I have a good idea I feel down to my core, I will then return to Photoshop and mock everything up. When I find myself going slow in Photoshop then thats a sign to me I don't really have a clear design solution and need to a step back and go back to paper until I figure out a solution.

How does a designer work with engineers?

MH: We have a very close working relationship with our engineers, they are deeply involved with the design of the product or feature from the very beginning. Many have a very strong interest in the user experience and strong opinions on how a product should look. A good designer can listen to everyone’s input and provide a strong solution that should leave everyone satisfied (after much debate and mock wrangling).

A typical product or feature cycle may work like this:

Meet to talk about an idea (ideas originate from anyone)

Brainstorming around that idea in the form of whiteboard sessions along with healthy debate, and get to a general agreement around one solution

Mocks and prototype - In tandem, engineers will start building a skeleton prototype to prove out the idea while a designer will create some higher fidelity mocks.

The group meets back up, we run through the mocks and make adjustments and tweaks as needed. Rinse and repeat the mock/prototype process until the group is in agreement on what exactly we are building.

Design then works closely with the Front End engineers on implementation and design, sometimes providing rich html/css/js design prototypes to create a clean example of the UI and interaction.

We then roll out the solution internally and do a bunch of testing, then if all goes well we launch the feature 100%.

The typical cycle take about a week, but can be as short as a daily cycle or a much longer cycle for something large. For bigger features we’ll run usability studies to get insights as well. We tend to have many cycles going in parallel.

What is the most interesting project to date that you have worked on?

MH: The REALLY interesting projects I can’t talk about yet, but there were three from last year that were really awesome and huge learning experiences - the site-wide redesign of YouTube, the redesign of our YouTube player (both on site and off site) and our new home page. Designing for hundreds of millions of people is an incredible opportunity and a huge challenge when you consider our global audience who consume YouTube on a variety of different devices, languages and accessibility formats.

What was your path to Google?

MH: I am a serial entrepreneur and have done a bunch of start-ups. I came to Google in January of 2011 after they acquired a startup I helped co-found called fflick.com. I’ve worked on design, coding and all kinds of roles over the years. I’ve worn many hats, but the hat I really love to wear is that of a designer.

What did you study in school to prepare you for work in user experience?

MH: I didn’t know it at the time, but I would say my minor in humanities prepared me more as a designer than anything else I studied in college, as it taught me how to take inspiration from the rich world around me. I also worked as a web designer/developer in school. I was hired on full time (30 hours a week) to work at a startup during my full class load at school. My work as a web developer and designer in the early dot com bubble days allowed me to learn first hand how to design and code sites, how to cope with unrealistic deadlines and most importantly how to launch new products.

What do you love most about working for Google?

MH: At the end of the day, and I really don’t want to sound too cheesy and cliche here, but at Google we have the opportunity to work on anything we can imagine, literally anything. Of course, you have to convince others of your ideas and come up with a plan to execute, but for someone like me who has built up products and businesses in the past, I feel totally free to create anything under the sun (or even beyond the sun). Google has the people and resources to make any idea you have into a reality.

Hopefully you've had a chance to read our Googler profiles in honor of Black History Month. If not, you can catch up on what you missed by reading our Q&A with Brittney Fraser, Software Engineer, Jana Landon, People Operations Rotation Associate, and Yolanda Mangolini, Director of Global Diversity Talent & Inclusion and Talent & Outreach Programs. On Monday and Tuesday we'll be concluding the series with a couple of Hangouts on Air, the first hosted from the Google Students Google+ page! We hope you will join us to learn more about working at Google, Black History Month, and Google's commitment to diversity.

Starting today, we encourage you to begin submitting your questions via Twitter or Google+ using the hashtag #BHMgoogle. We’ll collect a list of the questions that are sent in and answer them live during the Hangout On Air!

As we celebrate Black History Month, we bring you a series profiling black Googlers in various roles. Today we’re finishing up our series with Yolanda Mangolini, Director of our Global Diversity Talent & Inclusion and Talent & Outreach Programs teams. -- Ed.

Can you tell us about your background and your road to Google?

Yolanda Mangolini: Although I work in People Operations, my background is not in human resources. After graduating college with an economics degree, I worked on Wall Street in investment banking for a couple of years. While the experience gave me great analytical training, the hours were killer! I decided to head back to business school at Stanford to get my MBA.

Between my first and second year of B-school, I interned with the Boston Consulting Group where I fell in love with management consulting. I love to learn and get excited about solving tough problems. Consulting gave me an opportunity to do both.

After six years, I moved to California from the East Coast and joined Wells Fargo’s Consumer Operations division as the Head of Strategy where I did similar strategic and operational projects that I had done while at BCG, except now it was all in financial services. After three years there, I was ready for something new and that’s when Google came into the picture. That was almost six years ago. I had never considered HR before and in fact my perception of HR was that it was this big, lumbering, uninteresting administrative function. But Google was at an interesting inflection point in its evolution. It had ~6K people at that point and was getting to a size where it needed to have more robust people processes in place. I was excited about to be a part of building some of those processes and the opportunity to have a real impact.

How has your career developed at Google?

YM: The last six years have been a fun, interesting and unexpected ride. I joined Google in an individual contributor role after having been a people manager for almost ten years, which was a bit of a shift for me. My very first job was actually working with Laszlo Bock [Senior Vice President, People Operations] on a project looking at how we could improve sourcing and recruiting effectiveness. One of the recommendations coming out of that work was the idea of a Central Staffing team. I was asked if I wanted to run it and the rest, as they say, is history. At that time, Central Staffing consisted of job boards, resume screeners, the contingent workforce team and non-exempt workforce processes. We would also do special staffing projects focused on process improvement. I knew absolutely nothing about Staffing and had a ton to learn. I found the challenge a ton of fun, plus I worked with an absolutely fabulous team. After spending a couple of years doing that, I moved out of Central Staffing and into the Talent & Outreach Programs Manager role, got Central Staffing back and then added Global Diversity and K12 Outreach.

What makes Google different from the other companies you’ve worked for?

YM: I’m really lucky in that two of the four companies I’ve worked for in my life have consistently been within the ten best places to work on Fortune’s Great Places to Work survey. I’ve worked for some really great companies, but Google is a very different type of company. The first thing that struck me is how much the employee is at the center of our people processes. At some of the other larger companies I worked for, I felt like the company was there to support senior leadership and not so much the rank and file employee. The other thing I noticed was how strong a voice employees had in the company. When they spoke, leadership really listened. I saw this both in Googlegeist (our annual company survey), TGIF (our weekly company-wide meetings, hosted by the founders) as well as many other places. The e-mail discussion threads were also so fascinating. I had never seen an employee base engage each other in such open, spirited discussion like that before. Google truly has a one-of-a-kind culture.

Your official title at Google is Director, Global Diversity Talent & Inclusion and Talent & Outreach Programs. What does that mean?

YM: It’s certainly a mouthful! The Diversity part of my job basically means I’m responsible for ensuring we build a diverse and inclusive workplace where Googlers can bring their whole selves to work. We want Google to be the best place to work for everybody. My teams help support the activities of 19 different Employee Resource Groups at Google, from the Black Googler Network to the Gayglers to the Greyglers to VetNet. We also strive to build an inclusive culture through events like Sum of Google which attempts to bring all Googlers into the diversity conversation and working with the Benefits team to make sure our benefit programs treat all of our Googlers equally. The Talent & Outreach Programs part of my job focuses on three primary things: identifying, developing and hiring talented university students around the world, building supplemental experienced hire candidate pipelines to funnel to our functional Staffing teams and helping to promote and maintain Google’s employment brand through sponsorships of various technical conferences and hosting events like CodeJam and I/O Extended. And although it’s not in my title, one of the teams I am responsible for is the K-12 Outreach team which build programs aimed at developing the next generation of computer scientists (particularly those traditionally underrepresented in CS).

When I’m not at Google...

YM: I’m spending quality time with my family. I have a 4-year old daughter and 6-year old son who keep my husband and I very busy!

How do you manage your work life balance?

YM: It’s definitely challenging, but I try to set boundaries. I always leave work by 5pm to get home in time to have dinner with my kids. From 5pm to 9pm is their time. We read, play board games or make-up pretend stories. I often have to get back online to close out emails from earlier in the day, but that doesn’t happen until after my kids have gone to bed. I also never work on weekends, unless I am in the middle of a fire drill. It’s important to disconnect. I make sure I take multiple vacations throughout the year where I can really get away from work.

What does being part of an employee resource group at Google mean to you? What makes BGN special?

YM: To me, it’s being part of group where there are some shared experiences --- whether that be because of your gender or cultural background or military experience. BGN’s members are incredibly passionate. I had actually only been at Google a few months when BGN was started by a couple of passionate Googlers. I remember being struck then by how engaged the BGN members were with both the Google community and the external Black community. There was an intense desire to have an impact and make a difference. Six years later, I still that engagement and passion. I see it in the group that faithfully travels down to New Orleans to build homes and work with local business and I see it in the team that planned a whole month full of events for Black History Month.

In your opinion, why is Google committed to diversity? What does diversity mean to Google? Why is diversity important?

YM: Focus on the user and all else will follow. As Googlers, that is something we hear a lot. We also live and breathe our mission: “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”. There’s no way we can truly be user-centric and deliver on our mission unless we have a diverse workforce. Our users come from all walks of life and from all corners of the world. In order to meet the needs of our customers, our workforce needs to reflect our globally diverse set of users. At Google, we think of diversity in its broadest terms. It’s not just gender or ethnic background which comes to mind when most people think about the word diversity. It's a diversity of perspectives and educational background. There have been numerous studies which have proven how more diverse teams lead to better products and more innovative teams. Innovation is core to what Google does. If we want to remain at the forefront of innovation, we will need to make sure we have a diverse workforce.

What is your most memorable Black History Month event or moment at Google, or which event are you most looking forward to in 2012?

YM: There have been so many great moments. Hearing from Dr. Clarence Jones, one of the co-authors of MLK’s I Have a Dream speech was enthralling. The art exhibit featuring a local Black artist was also amazing. But I have to say one of my favorite moments was watching “The Stepplers”, Google’s newly formed Step team perform was definitely a highlight! Their performance was fantastic!

Google has launched indoor maps, a new Google Maps for mobile feature that shows detailed building floor plans where available. You can use indoor maps to help new and returning students locate their classrooms and administrative offices, or navigate within large areas on campus, such as libraries or gymnasiums.

How do you get your university on the map? Just upload your building floor plans and Google will format it to appear on Google Maps for mobile. Your floor plan can be a blueprint, a digital image from your website, or a brochure. If you only have a physical copy of the floor plan, you can take a picture of the floor plan and use that image instead. Easy!

As we celebrate Black History Month, we bring you a series profiling black Googlers in various roles. Today we’re continuing our series with Jana Landon, a people operations rotation associate on the non-technical University Programs team. -- Ed.

Can you tell us about your background and your road to Google?

Jana Landon: During my junior year of college at Dartmouth (where I studied psychology), I decided to get involved with the Dartmouth Black Business Association. Shortly after I got involved, Google held an info session about the BOLD internship program. I applied and was accepted as a member of the 2010 BOLD intern class and that’s how I got my first exposure to Google. During the 11-week internship I was a member of the Global Diversity and Inclusion team in People Operations. I really enjoyed the work I was doing and the Google culture. When I was extended a full-time offer from Google a few weeks after the internship it wasn’t a hard decision to make because I knew so much about the company and had a realistic idea of what it would be like to work there full-time.

What was the Google BOLD program like?

JL: As an intern on the Global Diversity and Inclusion team, I supported internal employee resource groups (ERGs) like the Black Googlers Network, Hispanic Googlers Network, VetNet, Gayglers, Capability Council, Google Women Engineers and many more (there are about 17 ERGs). Working with these groups and also with teammates who sat in Asia and Europe really opened my eyes to the multi-faceted meaning of diversity. What I loved most about the internship were my projects. One of the most challenging but also rewarding projects I worked on was the Diversity at Google video. I went through a long process of proposal writing to get the adequate resources to produce a high quality video. I worked with Google’s internal production studio where I created, produced and edited the video which showcases all of the ways Google supports diversity for new employees. My “magic Google moment” was on my first day as a full-time Googler when I saw my diversity video played at Noogler (new Googler) orientation. It’s nice to know that even as an intern the work I did made a lasting impact.

The other great thing about BOLD was the people. That summer I lived with seven other interns in a big house in San Francisco (we called it the “Real World House”). I loved my intern class and a lot of us came back full-time. It’s nice moving across the country and already having a network of close friends.

As a very recent college graduate, how have you managed the transition from college to the workplace?

JL: It really helps having been a BOLD intern, because I had a great sense of what the work was going to be like and how the company works. Still, no matter what, starting a new chapter of your life is going to be hectic. It’s kind of like being a freshman again. You learn as you go and you have to pace yourself. You can’t get involved with everything right away or you are going to burn out. The term work/life balance becomes very real because you aren’t just starting a new job, you’re starting a new life. My co-workers and managers have been very helpful since they have been at Google and in the Bay Area for a while. I like that Google helps with important things like relocation and also connects you with other “Nooglers.” I learned about a lot of things like apartment openings and furniture sales through the new grad email thread.

What do you know now that you wish you knew as a student? If you could give every college student one piece of advice, what would it be?

JL: I’d say be open. I would never have guessed that I’d be working in HR or at a tech company at that. Be open to different types of experiences, internships, volunteer opportunities, etc. that can teach you about what you like and sometimes more importantly, what you don’t like. It would have been very easy to write Google off as a place I couldn’t work because I’m not a computer science or engineering person but after allowing myself to learn more about all aspects of Google I realized that I can make a valuable contribution to this company and this industry in other ways.

Your official title at Google is People Operations Rotation Associate. What does that mean?

JL: I am fortunate to be in a rotational program in People Operations which seeks to expose participants to all aspects of human resources. There are about 15 participants in my cohort and we get the opportunity to have three different roles on three different teams for nine months each. Right now I am in a specialist role, but by the program’s end I will have completed an analytical role and a generalist role. We are actually in the process of interviewing with new teams now because we switch in April. It’s pretty exciting!

What team are you currently working on? What is your role?

JL: My first rotation is with the University Programs team. I help recruit undergraduates for full-time and internship roles on the non-technical side of Google (i.e Sales, People Operations, and Marketing) by traveling to campus and putting on programs. This fall I covered outreach at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). I’ve also been able to work on aspects of the upcoming 2012 BOLD program which is very special to me as a former BOLDer.

When I’m not at Google...

JL: I travel. Hanover, NH wasn’t the easiest place to fly in and out of while in school so it’s nice to be able to take weekend trips. I’m trying to get to know Northern California, especially Oakland, where I live. Lately I’ve been going to a lot of comedy shows and concerts in Oakland and Berkeley. There’s so much history here, especially with respect to activism and the Black Power movement, that I’d like to learn more about.

What does being part of an employee resource group at Google mean to you? What makes BGN special?

JL: Being a part of an affinity group means having a support system. I can get everything from career advice to “where’s the party at” advice from my fellow BGNers and I’m able to meet so many people outside of People Operations that I might not have met otherwise. Something that makes BGN special is that it’s one of the first (if not the first) employee resource groups. Because of this, there is a lot of collaboration with ERGs that are establishing themselves to help them get their programs off the ground. This also means that there are all ages represented so when we have events there’s something for everyone.

What is your most memorable Black History Month event or moment at Google, or which event are you most looking forward to in 2012?

JL: I’m really disappointed that I missed the debut of the “Stepplers”--Google’s steppers. There was a “Step Show” last week that I couldn’t attend but I’ve seen the video and they were amazing! Other than that I’m looking forward to the Black History Month finale which will be an awards ceremony to honor those whose work has had large impact on BGN.

As we celebrate Black History Month, we bring you a series profiling black Googlers from various functions. We’re kicking off our series with Brittney Fraser, a software engineer on our search team. -- Ed.

Can you tell us about your background and your road to Google?

Brittney Fraser: I was born in LA, but my family moved to Maryland when I was seven. Given that I dislike cold weather and humidity, I jumped at the opportunity to go to Stanford. I received both my BS and MS degrees in Computer Science at Stanford and was a TA for the introductory CS course for the majority of my years there. As graduation approached, my next decision was where to start my career. I looked at a number of companies, all of which had challenging opportunities, but Google stood out. The culture of openness and having fun while you work really appealed to me, as did the thought of problem solving on the scale at which Google operates. I was excited to work on products that will be used by millions and millions of people from different cultures, generations, and countries.

How did you become interested in computer science?

BF: I started college with this vague idea that I was going to be a doctor and started taking a lot of chemistry/pre-med courses, but I wasn't super passionate about this. During my sophomore year, my best friend convinced me to take an introductory computer science class and I instantly fell in love. There was just so much more freedom to solving the problems! Most of my chemistry problem sets were based on memorization, but this wasn't how things were in CS; instead of being told how to solve the problem, I was just told here is the problem, now go solve it however you see fit. So I immediately changed my major; I appreciate both the challenge and opportunity to bring my own creativity to solving diverse problems.

Why should students consider studying computer science?

BF: Computer science as a field is continuously changing, which means there will always be opportunities to learn and create something new. Furthermore, as more and more things become digital or online, CS is increasingly instrumental in every aspect of our lives – from banking to health and medicine to online shopping to social networking, etc. Regardless of the industry, computer science will be key to how they operate.

What exactly does it mean to be a software engineer?

BF: Fundamentally, a software engineer uses a computer to solve problems. We write code (these are instructions telling the computer what to do) to create a solution to a problem someone has asked us to solve, create, or enhance. Put another way, software engineering is providing the "brain" behind much of the items we use daily to make them operate correctly -- from computers, to cell phones, to word processing applications, to websites – and of course – Google! Most of software engineering is designing the best solution with your team – here is where diversity of views and approaches becomes most helpful because the more ideas you can bring to the table, the greater the opportunity to develop something together no one person would likely develop alone. In addition to problem solving and teamwork, you also need to be able to clearly explain your ideas and be willing to incorporate someone else's idea into a final solution.

What team/project do you work on at Google?

BF: I'm a software engineer within a great group called search features. We are responsible for implementing all of the new features on Google's search results page. Some recent, well-known search features projects include Google Instant, Search by Image, and our Flight Search feature. More specifically, I work on a smaller team within this group focused on social search. Our focus is to help make your search results more relevant and personal to you, including results shared with you by people you care about. We recently launched Search plus Your World which surfaces photos, websites and Google+ posts that your friends have shared with you publicly and privately.

As a recent college graduate, how have you been able to make an impact at Google?

BF: I've been at Google for a little over a year and a half and I've already been involved in two launches. The first was a feature called Item Search, which allowed the user to better explore items within a list/category. (My personal favorite example query is "Disney Princesses"; look for the Top References block.) And as I mentioned above, I was working on the Search plus Your World launch. I remember one day a few weeks before launch, the senior vice president of Search came into my office and asked for an update on the status of the product and when we expected to launch. Until then, I didn't know that he even knew my name and yet here he was looking to me for answers! It was really exciting, and slightly nerve-racking.

As one of only a handful of African-American students in computer science at Stanford, and the only African-American woman, it is very important to me to increase the diversity of the field. It is only with a variety of different viewpoints and life experiences that we are able to create products that appeal universally. Towards that end, I’ve become involved with Google’s campus outreach and college recruiting efforts, and recently participated in a video that highlights women in technology.

What do you know now that you wish you knew as a student? If you could give every college student one piece of advice, what would it be?

BF: The most important thing you can do is follow your passion, even if it differs from the expectations placed upon you. I arrived at Stanford with my parents telling me I should be a doctor. And for a while, I listened to them and took a bunch of classes I didn’t enjoy. When I first discovered computer science, I struggled for a little bit since changing my major would mean disappointing my parents. But I’ve learned that time goes very quickly, so my view is it’s better to spend it doing something you love than not. My parents did come around and were happy with my choice when they realized that I had found something I enjoy doing and that I had joined a field leading to numerous career opportunities across the world.

How did being a member of the Stanford Society of Black Scientists and Engineers help you personally or professionally?

BF: As I mentioned earlier, I was one of only a handful of African-American students in the entire computer science department, which meant there were very few people “like me” in my classes. I’ll admit, there were times that I was discouraged by my choice of major, and often wondered if I had made the right choice. The Society of Black Scientists and Engineers (SBSE) was one of many places I sought encouragement during my first few years. Through SBSE, I was able to meet and befriend a lot of other engineers who were in similar situations, and felt free to talk with them about our feelings of not belonging. Over time, I felt more comfortable having this conversation with a variety of people and I realized that it’s not just African-Americans or women or transplanted East Coasters who feel this way; at some point in time, almost everyone feels like they don’t belong.

SBSE also gave me the opportunity to learn more about other engineering companies in the Bay Area. Every meeting a different company would come speak a little about life at that company and the available job opportunities. I took full advantage of these occasions to learn more about the culture and expectations at other companies, which I referenced when deciding to join Google.

When I’m not at Google...

BF: I recently moved to San Francisco so I spend a lot of my free time exploring the city (and its restaurants) with friends. I also really enjoy baking while watching terrible straight-to-DVD/TV movies. I also enjoy reading; I just finished The Hunger Games trilogy and am now working on The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.

Introduction: Today’s post is a continuation of our Exploring Design @ Google blog series which highlights the work of the user experience (UX) team at Google. The user experience team is a multi-disciplinary team of designers and researchers who collaborate with engineering and product management to create innovative, usable, great-looking products that people love to use. The mantra of the the team is: "Focus on the user and all else will follow." Each week, we will feature a different Googler on the team and talk to them about their role, their background and what they love about working for Google. For today’s post, we sat down for a few questions with Doug Fox, a user experience researcher on the Google Analytics team.

What does user experience mean to you?Doug Fox: I think our Google Analytics UX lead defines it best with the notion of “wow, delight, and love”. For any given product, it is important that the first impression has that wow factor. Something that makes you take notice and want to use it. After the wow factor, it is important that it is designed well enough to be delightful. Meaning that the product is designed easy and effective enough that users enjoy it and want to keep using it. Finally, the true measure of a good user experience is love. After using it for a prolonged period of time, users should cringe at the idea of the product you designed being taken away (like how I feel about Google Maps for Mobile!).

How does your role fit into the larger team?DF: Simply put, my job is to help the Google Analytics team understand how to design for our users. Web analytics products such as Google Analytics have a wide range of users with varying needs. It is my job to make sure we are meeting those needs. To do this, I conduct research using different techniques and then inform other members of our team (project managers, designers and engineers) what parts of the design are working well and what could be improved.

Tell us about a day in the life of a researcher.DF: There is no typical day in the life of a researcher, especially at Google. In any given day, I could be working on a variety of projects. At its core, my days are filled with two agendas: learn and communicate.

I am constantly talking with team members to learn about projects, investigating the latest research findings in my field or interacting with our users to see how they are using our product. Never in my life did I think I would know about Customer Lifetime Analysis or Cookie Churn. As a researcher, you do what it takes to better understand a topic of interest that will make the user experience better.

Your learnings are useless without the ability to communicate them back to the team. I communicate research findings back to the team or company through meetings, presentations, reports and visuals. To be an effective communicator, my reports have included everything from a comic strip to show how users interact with each other to highlight videos from user sessions that reveal frustration or satisfaction in our products.

How does a researcher work with engineers?DF: The great thing about Google is that teams are formed with people across multiple roles (engineers, project managers, designers, etc.). Couple that with the fact that we have an open work environment and it is very easy to work together and collaborate.

Many of the engineers on the team are stakeholders on the research projects that I conduct. Thus, they attend research planning meetings or presentations of findings. Based on these findings we then work together as a team to determine how to best design the product.

What is the most interesting project to date that you have worked on?DF: I recently conducted a project for the Google TV team to help define future remote designs. You know it is going to be a fun project when your job is to observe how people watch TV! Part of the project had users designing their own TV remote through a participatory design. It involved all members of a household, so it was interesting to see the differences and similarities between a teenager’s remote and that of a less tech savvy parent. This showed us just how challenging it is to design a remote that is meant for such a diverse population of television viewers.

What was your path to Google?DF: My path was fairly direct. I did two internships at Google as a graduate student. After getting my master’s in experimental psychology in 2009 and before I started my PhD, I interned at Google. I worked on projects related to small to medium business advertising and Google TV. In 2010, I did another internship at Google working with the Google Analytics team. The Google Analytics team was a great fit for me, so I decided to rejoin the team after graduating with my PhD in 2011.

What did you study in school to prepare you for the world of user experience?DF: I earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology as an undergrad, and a master’s and Ph.D. in experimental psychology with a focus on human factors. The specific lab that I worked in as a graduate student commonly contracted usability work with companies like Dell & Motorola. It was a natural fit for me to work in usability at a tech company like Google.

Members of the UX team have a wide range of backgrounds. Most people don’t think of a psychology major working at Google. However, my social science background coupled with my Human Computer Interaction background has really helped me with the most important part of user experience research, and that is knowing how to effectively learn about the people using your product.

If you were able to go back in time and take a class that you wished you took in college, what would that be and why?DF: I wish I had taken more classes in computer science. I took a few, but not enough to have a deep understanding of the field. This sometimes makes it difficult to learn or communicate technical findings to engineers or designers. However, Google’s open culture makes it easy to learn from each other so I am quickly becoming more knowledgeable in this subject.

What do you love most about working for Google?DF: I love the freedom of choice at Google. They hire people expecting that they are highly knowledgeable in their respective field. I don’t feel as if I am being micromanaged, and I have the freedom to work on projects that fit my capabilities. You’re encouraged to think outside the box and push your limits. I get to determine the best methodology and have had opportunities to conduct research that I would have never dreamed of doing when I was a student.

Also, it is pretty cool knowing that you work on products that impact millions of people. As a user experience researcher that makes your job more demanding, but it also makes it more rewarding because you actually feel as though your research matters. Working hard as a team to put out a new feature and then watching watching the internet blow up with praise when we have done a good job is pretty exciting.

Are you between 18 and 24 years old and have done something to make an impact in the world? Do you fancy the opportunity to come to the UK and meet some of the great minds of our time?

If so, apply by March 19 to Google's youth challenge, Zeitgeist Young Minds, by uploading a short video telling your story, what matters to you and how you’re making a positive impact on your world. We want to find the most exceptional and inspiring young people who are helping others through science, the arts, education, leadership or innovation.

The inaugural ‘Young Minds’ competition rewarded a series of pathbreakers, ranging from a student who launched free hip-hop dance classes for high-risk youth to a South African AIDS activist to a student who founded an organization offering IT education. A full list of last year's winning projects are found here.

Events agency Livity is managing the contest and will pick the winners. Zeitgeist Young Minds is open to all young people ages 18-24 who are residents of South Africa, Algeria, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Belgium, Egypt, Spain, France, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, Uganda, Holland, Poland, Czech Republic, United Kingdom, Russia , Sweden, Tunisia, and Yemen.

We are delighted to announce the grand prize winners of Google Code-in 2011, a contest designed to introduce pre-university students (age 13-17) to the world of open source software development. Congratulations to all 542 students from 56 countries who completed an impressive 3,054 tasks in the contest. All students who participated will receive a t-shirt and a certificate for their participation in the contest. Those students who successfully completed 3 or more tasks will be receiving a small monetary prize as well.

And the 10 grand prize winners are... (in alphabetical order by first name)

These 10 pre-university students completed an impressive 449 tasks during the eight week contest period. The grand prize winners will be flown to Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, California in early June along with a parent or legal guardian for a four night trip. During the trip they will have an awards ceremony, an opportunity to meet with Google engineers, and enjoy a fun day exploring San Francisco.

Thank you to all of the students, mentors, organization administrators and the many IT teachers who encouraged their students to learn more about the world of open source.

Have you ever wished you knew the most direct route from your dormitory to your geography class across campus? Do you want a great way to help your roommate finally discover the library before midterms? Now is the perfect time to form a team and ensure that your university map is up to date using Google Map Maker. Today we’re kicking off the first ever Map your University 2012 competition for the United States and Canada!

From February 13th until March 9th, 2012, Google invites students studying in the United States and Canada to become local experts by updating and adding detail to their campus maps for viewing in Google Maps and Google Earth. Adding everything from walking paths to university buildings to local businesses will help students and visitors alike when trekking across your college grounds. Winning teams will be selected based on the thoroughness and accuracy of mapping in and around campus, and a brief personal statement. Fabulous prizes include Android tablets and phones, GPS devices, Google Map Maker messenger bags, t-shirts, and more!

The beautifully mapped University of California Berkeley Campus, completed by participants in the 2011 US Map Maker Roadshow.

Many university students around the world are already hard at work mapping their schools. UC Berkeley, pictured above, was among 18 universities that participated in the 2011 US Map Maker Roadshow, as was Lehman College, where students mapped almost their entire campus in one day! Over 700 attendees across the country participated in hands-on mapping workshops and mini-competitions with the help of Google’s Student Ambassador Program.

If you walk down the halls of our New York office, you might learn something about the history of technology. This month, our walls showcase the contributions of Black inventors in science, technology, engineering and mathematics in celebration of Black History Month.

Black History Month, which is every February in the U.S., provides us with an opportunity to recognize the history and diversity of the communities where we operate. Yesterday, our midwestern Googlers listened to the music of Michigan’s only Black and Latino Orchestra and next week, Dr. Clarence Jones will be speaking to our Bay-area Googlers about writing Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. This is just a small sampling of the dozens of celebrations Googlers are hosting all month long.

Black History Month also gives us a chance to celebrate the diversity of our Googlers and highlight some ways we work with underrepresented groups. One of my favorite examples is the story of the Black Googlers Network (BGN). In June 2006, a group of Googlers looking to connect and foster community among Black colleagues got together to create an internal networking group. The Black Googlers Network started as a mailing list, but quickly grew into much more. Passionate about growing the next generation of Black leaders in the technology industry, BGN partnered with our university programs team to strengthen our relationships with Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). As a result, we’ve not only increased our recruiting presence at these schools, but are now also partnering with HBCU faculty to develop STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) curriculum, encouraging more students to pursue degrees in these areas and prepare them for careers in technology.

Members of our BGN are also shaping the way we do business. In May of 2009, two recent grads in our Ann Arbor office saw an opportunity, and what started as an idea bounced around between two twenty-somethings turned into an official Google program. The idea was to help minority-owned small businesses grow their online presence and, just a few months later, the idea became a reality when Accelerate with Google officially launched. The program has since grown into a team of several dozen Googlers, all working to get small, minority-owned businesses online and helping those business owners connect with one another.

Our passionate Googlers, like those behind BGN and Accelerate, allow us to better connect with the Black community and help to create an inclusive and diverse workplace. As we throw dozens of celebrations around the country in our Atlanta, Chicago, Ann Arbor, New York, Los Angeles and Mountain View offices to mark Black History Month, we invite you to join us by following our Google for Students and Life at Google pages on Google+, where we’ll be hosting photos, recaps and hangouts throughout the month.

The newest addition to the Google scholarships family is the Google Student Veterans of America (SVA) Scholarship. We’re partnering with the nonprofit Student Veterans of America (SVA) to support their mission of providing veterans with the resources, support and advocacy they need to succeed in higher education and throughout their careers. The Google SVA Scholarship is available to student veterans who are pursuing degrees in computer science and related fields in the U.S. for the 2012-2013 academic year. In addition to the financial award, recipients will be invited to attend the annual all-expenses-paid scholars’ retreat at the Googleplex in Mountain View, Calif. in the summer of 2012.

We have a long history of helping university students pursue computer science education with scholarship and internship opportunities. Since our first scholarships were awarded in 2004, we’ve provided over $8.8 million dollars of financial support to 2,100 students from historically underrepresented groups worldwide. Our academic scholarship programs are just one part of our global effort to increase the diversity of the technology industry and invest in the next generation of computer scientists. This mission includes ensuring that student veterans in the U.S. have the support they need to pursue technology education and careers.

Google’s commitment to military veterans extends beyond our educational outreach efforts. The Google Veterans Network, one of our 18 employee groups dedicated to supporting diversity and inclusion at Google, fosters a community of support for our military veterans, reservists, guardsmen, family members and friends. In 2011, we introduced a customized job search engine called the Veterans Job Bank in partnership with the Department of Veterans Affairs. Members of our veterans’ community also partnered with the Google Creative Lab to launch Chrome for Wounded, Ill and Injured Warriors and to create Google for Veterans and Families, a new online resource that brings together our free products and platforms for service members and their families. As a Google engineer and a Marine veteran, I’m proud of our commitment to diversity and of our efforts to bring other veterans into the world of technology and computer science.

The deadline to apply for the Google SVA Scholarship is March 15, 2012.

Introduction: Today we’re launching Exploring Design @ Google, a new blog series highlighting the work of the user experience (UX) team at Google. The user experience team is a multi-disciplinary team of designers and researchers who collaborate with engineering and product management to create innovative, usable, great-looking products that people love to use. The mantra of the the team is: "Focus on the user and all else will follow." Each week, we will feature a different Googler on the team and talk to them about their role, their background and what they love about working for Google. For our first post, we sat down for a few questions with Kelcey Rushing, a visual designer in Seattle.

What does user experience mean to you?Kelsey Rushing: Understanding who the user is and what they need, and designing a product or feature that best fulfills that need. It sounds simple enough but the path from need to solution has a bajillion forks in it. The challenge lies in making the best decisions with the help of research, competitive analysis, team brainstorms and feedback, multiple iterations, learning from past missteps and sometimes instinctive leaps of faith. Add in deadlines, limitations and stakeholder requests and you have yourself a pretty fun puzzle to solve that makes the work that much more rewarding.

How does your role fit into the larger team?KR: I’m one of three designers on my team, and we’re involved with every phase of a project from planning to polish. For large projects, the whole team works on a strategy and then engineers and designers partner up to implement the ideas. Then we’ll help marketing spread the word with interesting visuals, and make any necessary improvements once the user feedback starts rolling in.

Tell us about a day in the life of a visual designer.KR: Most days at Google go something like this:
9:00 Arrive at work and grab a healthy, tasty breakfast
9-9:30 Catch up on email while eating breakfast, then head to the micro-kitchen with my fellow designers to get coffee and talk about what we’re working on
9:30-12:00 Work and/or meetings until lunch
12:00-12:30 Eat an amazing lunch with my team and top it off with fro-yo
12:30-5:00 Work and/or meetings until it’s time to go home
When the sun comes out in Seattle, we take walks down on the canal next to the office, and once in awhile I’ll stay late for a massage or to work out in the gym down the hall. It’s a pretty rough life.

How does a visual designer work with engineers?KR: It varies a bit from project to project but generally we’ll start by brainstorming and sketching together to make sure we’re on the same page. Next, I’ll make low-fidelity storyboards of the flows while the engineer starts coding the initial framework. After, I’ll move on to mocks that we use to get approval from stakeholders, do rough usability testing and find out where we need to make adjustments. Once everything is fairly close to final, I’ll start polishing the visuals and making sure the engineer has all the information and files they need to get the project ready for launch.

What is the most interesting project to date that you have worked on?KR: All of my projects have been interesting—that’s why I love my job! Even the ones that seem mundane on the surface turn into fun challenges once I’ve talked with the team that’s passionate about them. That being said, there are two projects that stand out as the most interesting and/or exciting for me: traveling to the Zurich office for a product re-design and making custom Google+ profile photos for celebrities last Halloween.

What was your path to Google?KR: After college I worked for a year in real estate, where I discovered a passion for designing flyers and building web sites. That led me to the Seattle Central Creative Academy and I was hired by a Seattle startup right out of design school. After working there for about nine months, we were acquired by Google and I’ve been here ever since.

What did you study in school to prepare you for work in user experience?KR: At the University of Washington I double-majored in communications and French. Then I went back to school for two years to get an Associate of Applied Science degree in graphic design & illustration. That’s a fancy way of saying that the program’s main focus was teaching us skills that would apply directly to a job in user experience.

If you were able to go back in time and take one more college class, what would it be and why?KR: My design program was incredible when I attended a few years ago, and the teachers are constantly updating the courses to keep up with the ever-changing tech world. There are new classes cropping up every year that I wish I could take. But if I had to choose just one, I’d like to take an HTML5 course because those skills would be useful in my current role at Google.

What do you love most about working for Google?KR: It’s really hard to choose just one thing so I’m going to be tricky and say the culture, which covers almost all of it. Googlers are a friendly, good-hearted bunch of rock stars and the company treats its employees so well it’s hard to believe most of the time. There are opportunities to travel to Google offices all over the world, and the work is challenging, impactful and rewarding. All of these things are encouraged as part of the company’s unique culture. There’s also a strong design community here so there’s an opportunity to learn and collaborate with hundreds of other designers.

This will be the 8th year for Google Summer of Code, an innovative program dedicated to introducing students from colleges and universities around the world to open source software development. The program offers student developers stipends to write code for various open source projects with the help of mentoring organizations from all around the globe. Over the past seven years Google Summer of Code has had 6,000 students from over 90 countries complete the program. Our goal is to help these students pursue academic challenges over the summer break while they create and release open source code for the benefit of all.

Spread the word to your friends! If you know of a university student that would be interested in working on open source projects this summer, or if you know of an organization that might want to mentor students to work on their open source projects, please direct them to our Google Summer of Code 2012 website where they can find our timeline along with the FAQs. And stay tuned for more details coming soon!

In September you read about Google’s technical internship opportunities for summer 2012. Today we’d like to talk a bit about the technical full-time opportunities available for students who are preparing to graduate (or have graduated) during the 2011-2012 academic year. All of these positions are listed on our student jobs site broken down by region, but today here we’re hoping to provide a more in-depth look at a few of the roles for which we’re recruiting in our North America offices:

Works on providing direct support for Linux, Mac and Microsoft desktops/laptops and user access to corporate network and applications. ITRs also provides direct support for services such as office phones, video conferencing, and remote access. They’re also responsible for troubleshooting of Google’s corporate resources and applications and supporting Google’s office relocations and expansions.